benjamr

Hello, I am going crazy trying to work out what might be wrong with my code. I have a page, See: http://www.hempnallvillage.co.uk/ which appears beautifully in Firefox and in IE 7, but in IE 6, the layout goes a bit "up the shoot", in that it seems to drop the right-column below the left-column. Here is a (poor) screen shot of the display in IE 6. ---> http://www.hempnallvillage.co.uk/css_problem.htm Following code is the CSS. Can anyone suggest a solution? I'd be immensely grateful! body {font : normal 12px/1.6em Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color : #2a3845;margin : 0;padding : 0;background:#FFFFFF;} p { margin : 0;padding : 0;} a:visited, a:link {color : #7f2890;text-decoration : underline;background:none;} a:hover {color : #a43b55;text-decoration : none;background:none;} h1 { color : #7f2890;margin: 0px 0px 10px 0px;padding-bottom : 10px;font : normal 25px Georgia, serif;border-bottom : 1px solid #efece7;} h2 {color : #7f2890;margin : 20px 0 10px;padding-bottom : 10px;font : normal 17px Georgia, serif;border-bottom : 1px solid #efece7;} h3 {color : #f60;margin : 10px 0;padding-bottom : 10px;font : bold 14px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;border-bottom : 1px solid #efece7;} h4 {color : #333;margin : 10px 0;padding-bottom : 10px;font : bold 14px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;border-bottom : 1px solid #efece7;} ul {padding:0;margin:0 0 0 8px;list-style: square url(images/bullet.gif);} .box {background : #dfcbe4;border : 1px solid #f0e9eb;padding : 15px;} .box2 {background : #f7ec82;border : 1px solid #f0e9eb;padding : 15px;} .box3 {background : #ffffff;border : 1px solid #ffffff;padding : 15px;} /*** Layout ****/ #wrapper {margin : 0 auto;width : 776px;border-left : 1px solid #f0e9eb;border-right : 1px solid #f0e9eb;} #header {margin : 0 1px;} #bg {height : 36px;background : url(images/bg.gif) repeat-x;} #nav {background : #7f2890;padding : 10px 20px;text-align : right;color : #ffffff;} /* #nav a:visited, #nav a:link {text-decoration : none;color : #f6dde3;} #nav a:hover {text-decoration : underline;color : #f6dde3;} */ #main-content {margin : 0 auto;} #left-column {width : 440px;padding : 0 30px 30px;float:left;} #right-column {width : 270px;float:right;} .crd a:visited, .crd a:link, .crd a:hover{text-decoration : none;color : #2a3845;cursor: text;} #pagewidth { background-image: url(images/hands-bg.png); padding : 10px 15px; clear : both; background-attachment: scroll; background-color: #FFFFFF; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: center; } #regs {background : #dfcbe4; border : 1px solid #7f2890; padding : 10px 15px; clear : both;} #footer {background : #f7eb89; border-top : 1px solid #f0e9eb; padding : 10px 15px; clear : both;} /*** SideBAR ***/ #main-image {text-align : center;} .sidebar {width : 218px;margin : 0 auto;padding : 10px 25px;background : url(images/shadow.jpg) no-repeat top;} .sidebarpurple {width : 218px;margin : 0 auto;padding : 10px 25px;background : url(images/shadowpurple.jpg) no-repeat top;}

Cheers! Thought you might say that! I've got some tidying up to do!

Which is better practice? : To use <p> and </p> to wrap paragraphs of text OR : to use <br><br> tags between the "paragraphs" to produce the same effect?

Thanks guys for the advice. I think there's definitely some sound advice in what you've said, Bluedreamer. I think most of my jobs would be between £200 and £500. I'm still trying to working out a reasonable pricing structure. Thanks also for your reply, Penguin. That's was actually more what I was after. I had a suspicion that the %age would be pretty high as most websites can be done via email and phone. That's good !

I'm still thinking about feasibility of starting up as a sole trader web designer/developer. In trying to work out my break-even amount for income, I need to get some idea of the gross profit margin (%) in web designing and web developing. I can't think of any way of finding this out, apart from simply asking established web designers and web developers i.e. Percentage of Sales left over after variable costs have been deducted. Any comments? Hope this makes sense and is a reasonable thing to ask people to divulge. I'm just going through my notes after attending a "Starting Your Own Business" Workshop.

I forgot to say that this PC also have a whacking great 10GB harddrive. The motherboard is pretty old which makes finding the sticks of RAM (which fit) quite difficult at reasonable prices. I will have a look on eBay as I have seen then on there before. ...but this PC really has had its day. I want to get a laptop, so I will probably clean this one up (delete all the junk on it), try to beef up the RAM on it a bit and then let my wife use it. (She only browses internet and occasionally uses MS Word).

Thanks to all of you for the brilliant set of responses. There are some small agreements between the specs! I read somewhere (else) that RAM is most important (i.e. that you can't get enough of it) and that the processor speed is not so important. I think my present desktop PC spec is probably as basic as it gets these days: 800 MHz AMD Duron processor 512 MB of RAM This is running Dreamweaver MX and Paintshop Pro on Windows XP, and has the added feature of giving me a tea-break between every keystroke and mouse-click! Very soon, I will definitely be getting a new laptop with probably 2GB of RAM and maybe Core 2 Duo. Can anyone make any recommendations?

Hello all! Here's a simple question. I bet (hope) it brings in a bit of debate... What do you consider the ideal spec for a PC for carrying out design and web development work? What would be your minimum spec for processor / RAM etc.? ....also which software do you consider indispensable?

Wow! Well done to you Antom! Apart from getting another job, I'm sort of in the same boat. I have been made redundant from an IT job (not web-related - I was a mainframe programmer/analyst and more recently a database administrator). Luckily I will be taking a bit of redundancy money, but the (sensible) other-half wants this to be paid against the mortgage. I have done some website design and development for a few paying clients in my spare time. These have mostly been static html websites with (shock-horror) <TABLE></TABLE> tags. I have fairly recently tried to drag myself out of the dark ages and have been having great fun experimenting with CSS, but there's a bit of a way still to go. The money will keep coming in on the old day-job until the middle of March, but after that I would like to start bringing in a bit in this industry, without dipping too much into any savings. Might still consider the plumbing course as a backup!

Thanks Dizi. There are definitely some clever people on here. I'm ditching tables in HTML and firmly embracing CSS and I have already found some great resouces on this forum. (Kenv - my Wife is Canadian, so may well be in B.C. within the next 3 or 4 years)!

Hello everyone. My name is Richard and I am based in Norfolk (UK). I have recently been made redundant by a very large insurance company in NORWICH (Guess which one that is)!, who have decided to offshore my IT job to India. Though I haven't been working professionally with web design/developing I have been designing and developing basic (mostly static HTML) sites for friends and local sole-traders, and am hoping to develop my CSS PHP MySQL ASP Accessibility etc skills in order to design and develop more dynamic websites as my new full time job. My job runs out in March 2007, so I have a short time to work out all the self-employment stuff and gradually "skill myself up". Hope it will be enough to pay the mortgage and feed the family! Looking forward to using the forum as I can already see that there are lots of very knowledgeable and helpful people out there!